Saturday, November 19, 2011

Six month old baby Gorilla Okanda likes nibbling tables and making a mess with banana puree

Sarah Chapman felt the hungry baby stirring in her arms at around 2am and dragged herself, bleary-eyed, from sleep.

Propping herself up on the sofa where they had both fallen asleep, she made soothing noises and stroked the young one’s hair as he drank milk hungrily from his bottle.

But the doleful brown eyes staring up at her belonged not to a newborn baby but to Okanda, a six-month-old, 11lb gorilla with a penchant for nibbling tables and making a mess with banana puree.

Sarah became surrogate mother to the baby ape from Twycross Zoo in Leicestershire after he became too thin and malnourished feeding on his own mother’s milk.

As the zoo’s specialist vet, the 34-year-old took on his full-time care, which meant nursing him back to health in her and her husband Julian’s nearby semi-detached home.

‘I’ve slept on the surgery floor many times watching a dog under treatment,’ says Sarah. ‘But I never imagined nursing a baby gorilla in my own lounge.’

Perhaps it was a small mercy that Sarah couldn’t have predicted the sleepless nights on the sofa, the medical procedures performed in the living room, and long days stuck inside the house with only a gorilla and the TV for company.

But now that Okanda — named after a national park in Western Africa — is on the mend and back at the zoo, I have come to Twycross to meet him.

On entering the one-bedroom bungalow (usually used as staff accommodation) near the zoo’s grounds where he is being cared for by a team of staff before being reintroduced to his family, Sarah is delighted to see her young charge again.

Okanda’s huge eyes fix on her as she walks in and immediately he snuggles into her lap. As he later bounds around the carpet on his knuckles and clambers up his purpose-built climbing frame, Sarah smiles like a proud parent.

‘Seeing him now makes me realise how thin and ill he was before,’ she says. ‘It’s been fantastic to see him improve, but it feels strange not to have him with me any more. I’ve only just stopped dreaming about him and feeling there’s something missing, but getting him back with his family was always the aim.

‘The breeding and conservation of these animals is so important. There are only 100,000 Western lowland gorillas in the wild, so he is precious.’

The chain of events that led to Okanda staying with the Chapmans began last month.

Sarah had only been working at the zoo for six weeks, but her passion for primates was already well-established and she was concerned when the zoo’s newest gorilla — Okanda, who was born in April — became listless with the symptoms of an upset stomach.

‘Primates tend not to show symptoms of illness unless they are very sick because they can’t show vulnerability in the wild,’ she says.

The tiny gorilla, who was living with his mother Ozala, silverback father Oumbi and ‘auntie’ Asante, was removed from his enclosure so he could be examined — a feat which involved sedating his mother who was protective of her baby and unwilling to let him go without a fight.

Okanda was put back with his mother and family following tests, but his lethargy got worse. At that point, Sarah and her colleagues had no choice but to intervene. ‘The quality of Ozala’s milk wasn’t good enough so Okanda wasn’t getting the nutrients he needed. If we had kept him with his mum, he would have died,’ she explains.

A mother's touch: To begin with Vet Sarah Chapman had to bottle-feed Okanda at her home in Leicestershire every two hours

Sarah realised the only solution was for her to look after Okanda.

‘After sending colleagues out to buy nappies and baby wipes, I called Julian and said: “Are you sitting down? I’m bringing a baby gorilla home.” Luckily, he replied: “OK, fair enough.” He’d married a vet, so he knows the drill.’

The fact that Julian had worked for 18 years as a keeper at Paignton Zoo in Devon before starting his own carpentry business probably helped, too.

Sarah took Okanda home in a large pet carrier along with towels, blankets, emergency drugs, stethoscopes, sterilising bottles and enough equipment to fill her Toyota Rav 4 to the roof.

But she quickly discovered that not everyone in her house was going to be happy with the new arrival.

‘My two dogs Paddy and Willow had to be shut in the kitchen so they didn’t pass on any infections, and the lounge became our gorilla room,’ Sarah says.

With a poorly ape clinging to her, Sarah set about covering the two sofas in towels, and she set up a play-mat and arranged cuddly toys on the floor.

To begin with, all Okanda could do was lie on her chest on the sofa, which became their bed. He was on antibiotics as he had an infection, leaving him extremely weak and with diarrhoea. His temperature was low so the house had to be kept warm and the heating on constantly.

Nonetheless, Sarah had to dress in thick jumpers and jeans so that, should Okanda decide to nibble at her, she was protected. There was also the issue of trying to sleep with an 11lb baby gorilla on her chest.

‘But it felt strangely natural,’ Sarah laughs. ‘I dropped off quite easily. It’s all quite bizarre, as I’m probably the least maternal person I know. At least I’d worked with gorillas so I was used to the very distinctive smell, which is musty and sweaty.’

The challenge was to take care of Okanda in a human environment while making sure nothing was done to jeopardise his eventual acceptance back into his primate family. If he adopted human characteristics, he would run the risk of rejection by his family.

Playtime: Slowly but surely Okanda is now becoming a hyperactive toddler

To that end, Sarah communicated using gorilla sounds. It may sound bizarre, but she is fluent in ‘gorilla’.

‘You end up picking it up when you spend time with them in zoos and in Africa, where I’ve been to study them in the wild,’ she says.

Sarah demonstrates a comforting ‘I’m here’ — a soft, low grumble that sounds a bit like clearing your throat. Then a sharp ‘uh’, which came in handy when Okanda started to recover.

‘That means “don’t do that”, which I used when he became too playful. He’s very strong so he can grip hard, and he bites — it may be affectionate, but it hurts.’

To begin with, Okanda was being bottle-fed baby formula milk every two hours to give him the nutrients he lacked. Two days after he arrived, he took a turn for the worse.

He stopped accepting milk and went downhill rapidly, which meant Sarah, Sharon Redrobe (head of life sciences at Twycross) and the veterinary nurses from the zoo, had to turn the lounge into a makeshift animal hospital.

‘We inserted a feeding tube up his nose and into his stomach,’ Sarah says. ‘It was such a tense time: the whole team thought we would lose him.’

For the next 24 hours, Okanda struggled for survival while Sarah kept him topped up with rehydration fluid and held him close to provide reassurance and stop him pulling out his feeding tube.

Sarah barely slept that night, but was relieved when Okanda finally turned a corner.

But the challenges were far from over. Okanda had to wear nappies because he wasn’t house-trained, and changing them proved to be one of Sarah’s biggest problems.

‘There are no instructions for how to change a gorilla’s nappy!’ she says.

‘I ended up getting advice from a gorilla expert at Bristol Zoo, who told me to change him backwards while holding him to my chest, which is actually much easier than it sounds.’

As Okanda gained strength and started to eat small pieces of fruit and vegetables, he behaved more like a hyperactive toddler, which meant that just eating a meal or showering proved another huge challenge for Sarah.

She says: ‘He clung to me constantly, like he would his mother. Usually I left him with Julian for a few minutes to shower, but on one occasion when Julian was out, I tried to put Okanda down in the bathroom.

It's not my turn to change him: Okanda has to wear nappies around the house as he isn't house trained

‘Unfortunately he jumped into the shower with me, just as I was trying to rinse out my conditioner. I didn’t try that again — but he did go very fluffy when I dried him!’

For the 11 days and nights that she was looking after Okanda, Sarah didn’t set foot outside the house. The only thing she could do, other than keeping a constant eye on the baby gorilla, was have the television on in the background to keep her sane — though Okanda paid it no attention.

He was far more interested in nibbling on pieces of red pepper, cucumber, tomato and food pellets laid out on his play-mat.

He also developed a penchant for chewing on the coffee table, scrunching up Sarah’s paperwork, and tapping all over her laptop keyboard if she had the temerity to try to send an email.

Day by day he got better. He has now been moved into the zoo bungalow — rather than back with his parents, even though his grief-stricken mother has been pining for him.

Having removed him so suddenly from the enclosure, it will be a slow process to put him back — he will have to visit his family for short periods first to be sure they will accept him into their fold.

‘I stayed with him for two days there until he got settled,’ says Sarah.

‘Then my colleague, John Buchan, head of primates, took over. It was so strange to leave Okanda, but I think Julian was relieved we had the house back to ourselves. I slept for days.’

Okanda is now making good progress, and the zoo’s main aim is to slowly try to reunite him with his pining mother, which they hope (but cannot be sure) will happen within eight weeks.

‘She has been searching for him, which is very sad to watch,’ says Sarah. ‘All the gorillas have been showing signs of tension, which is understandable.

‘Okanda is gorgeous and I miss having him around after being with him 24/7, but he’s not a pet. It will be incredible to see him back with his family, and hopefully one day he will become a 20st silverback with babies of his own.